Rethinking the impact of globalization on education in the Asia-Pacific

This chapter suggests that the various accounts of the "impact of globalization"on higher education policies in the Asia-Pacific, which assess this impact as either positive or negative, are misleading. This is so because such accounts run the risk of reifying globalization as if it has an external existence of its own, independent of the ways in which it is discursively constructed. While accepting the contention that the neoliberal imaginary of globalization has become globally hegemonic, the chapter argues that even this imaginary is employed in ways that are mediated by local histories and ideological preferences, as well as the various political interests involved in characterizing the opportunities and challenges associated with the facts of global interconnectivity. Using the cases of three systems of higher education, namely, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore, the chapter seeks to demonstrate how their higher education policies are exceptional in that they are located within the contexts of their different colonial histories, systems of governance, and understanding of geopolitical shifts, as well as their ideological interests in projecting themselves on the global stage.